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In this contribution, an investigation is made into the abandonment of a very large infrastructural investment by the UK government. It was the HS2 (High Speed 2) train 'assemblage' for the 345 miles from Leeds in the North to London. It occurred in the belief that such expenditure would 'level-up' the worsening regional economic disparities between the two regions and render the North (dubbed the 'Northern Powerhouse' by successive governments) 'competitive'. In reality, there was no evidence in support of the idea that a faster rail service would have this effect. Critics realized London's advantage could not be competed against. This was because its advantage as an unregulated 'tax haven' had been entrenched since even before William the Conqueror's invasion in 1066. Our take on this débâcle is that it was caused by hubris on the part of successive governments, culminating in the growth of distrust between politicians and the people, including 'experts' who were singled out for special ministerial disdain. The analysis explores 'assemblage' theory and its psychological origins, in which desire has come to substitute for thought in the UK political arena. Accordingly, desire has been swallowed up by 'competitiveness', meaning mistakes were made due to hubris, narcissism and criminality because of the politics of 'we know better' on the part of the political élite. The cost of these mistakes was upwards of £36 billion for the biggest UK rail infrastructure project in a hundred years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This editorial is intended to provide a brief overview of the evolution of a selection of European space economies and policies introduced to mitigate the devastating effects of at least five crises most have faced in the past decade or more. In a time of great fragility in economy, politics and society, concatenations of the five crises and more have challenged planners to come up with new solutions to long-standing urban and regional problems (otherwise 'opportunities'). The five crises focused on here are: Green Transition; Great Financial Crisis; Euro Crisis; Migration and Refugee Asylum Crisis; COVID-19 Crisis. Occasional papers in the Special Issue that follows refer to other crisis effects such as; Ukraine resistance to its war against the Russian invasion; the Israeli-Palestinian conflict of October 2023; Austerity policies and associated urban and regional disparities with inter-regional tensions; and the socio-economic effects of liberalization of Eastern Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The idea to be explored in this contribution is that to understand change as society evolves is useless without Learning that a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing and may look 'smart' but is likely to be unwise. This in turn requires an understanding of why the label 'knowledge economy' came into substantial usage by opinion-formers at about the same time. Thus a first wave of injunctions in favour of 'Learning' by governments and corporate leaders occurred about 30 years ago. The change in question was led by information technology and the production and consumption practices it entailed. In a second wave of 'Learning from Leaders', especially how to be 'Smart', the lesson quickly became 'Learning from Losers'. Here some of the most-vaunted - for example – 'smart' visions for various functions nevertheless failed to deliver. Perhaps the greatest failure to learn has been the sight and sound of 'Flailing by Failing' from Science Policy 'led' governments in response to the SARS2-Covid-19 pandemic when the lessons of at least moderate success involved 'Learning from Life' after being prepared by previous experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution develops previous work analysing forms of misconduct by knowledge-intensive professional business services (P-KIBS) firms, globally located and client-interactive on all five continents. Here we focus on accountancy partnerships, having previously investigated management consultancies. In the former, the infractions range from condoning systematic cheating at accountancy examinations, to unchecked client accountancy estimates signed-off as satisfactory, to covering up inflated budgetary estimates, to advising clients on fraudulent practice, to advising on tax evasion, to acting complicitly in corrupt government practices, including engaging in ‘state capture’ by channelling internal state revenue into private holding bank accounts. Because the litany of misconduct is too enormous for encompassing in a single contribution and in the spirit of this task, the spotlight is only on a few cases that represent typical ‘creative economy’ companies contracted to ‘Big 4’ accountancy P-KIBS in relation to sustainability and social equity issues. For interpretation of data discovery, we utilize evolutionary ‘pattern recognition’ methodology set within a ‘Thirdspace-assemblage’ theoretical framework. As a test, we sketch the ‘sustainability’ complexities of the Pacific Gas & Electricity (PG&E) and Deloitte/Lloyds Register relationship. Among the ‘creativity’ studies reported are the PWC-Walt Disney, KPMG-Conviviality and their EY-KPMG-Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon scandals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This collection on 'Open Innovation and Catch-Up: Globalist or Localist?' is introduced with an appreciation of three key transitions for spatial development today, viewed through seven comparative case analyses from Asia, the US and Europe. 'Institutional path dependence' is the first issue. The second has been 'hyperglobalization' now under moderate challenge from 'de-globalization'. Third, is the process of 'open innovation' that accompanied the 'globalist' turn, nowadays a slur of extreme populists. A 'pattern recognition' exercise follows to discern types of path dependence, agency ('dark' and 'lighter') and institutional co-evolution, then the Theme Issue contributions are summarized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article four main things are done. First, the difference between 'disaster preparedness' and the established field of 'disaster planning' is denoted. The latter, confusingly, is seen as post hoc aftermath response rather than prepared forethought. Second, there is a discussion about the similarities between 'disaster clean-up' in Roman times which was extorted as taxation from the poor to subsidize the rich and neo-liberal taxation policy in today's advanced economies, which similarly expropriate the poor to enable the rich to extort more wealth at the poor's expense. Third, we explore some weaknesses of ostensibly 'green' policy-making, which betrays traits of narcissism, egotism and vanity which should be avoided at all costs because they occasion failure and further raids on the taxpayer base in many cases. Finally, 10 papers are introduced, ranging from varieties of 'circular City', to rainfall harvesting, green space accounting and transition to wooden construction and revitalization of urban shrinkage settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution is critical of Neo-Schumpeterian innovation studies for a historic tendency to reify 'industrial' capitalism as its main conceptual framing model. This includes blind spots concerning the sustainability-free advocacy of 'green revolution' chemical fertilizer, pesticide and herbicide practice in industrialist food production. The Coronavirus contagion has alerted regional scientists to these lacunae and this contribution attempts to re-balance the prevailing traditional industrialist bias by considering alternative, more sustainability-informed innovation emphases. These include efforts to conceive innovative sustainable spatial planning models. A particular omission has been re-appraisal of the negative sustainability effects of global tourism. We do this by analyses of 'territorial innovation', including considerations of 'new urbanism' solutions to prevailing discontents, and advocating 'GreenSphere' design of 'circular economies' to escape from the negative effects of the environmental despoliation by urban congestion, widespread pollution (including pandemics), global tourism and human well-being. We exemplify the aspects of these conditions by running through three post-urban Model-types – Megacentres (e.g. Bioregional); Gigacentres (e.g. Global Tourism GigaSheds) and GreenSpheres (New Circular Ecologies) before concluding our contribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

World capitalism has become capitalism of abundance, but decadent capitalism. Today's capitalism is potentially destructive of the planet on which we live. This text seeks to highlight some of the irrationalities underlying this destructive potential, taking the relation between tourism and innovation as a paradigmatic example. The conceptual, political and operational articulation of tourism with innovation is not an easy task to accomplish, and there are many misunderstandings to block its desired symbiosis. It is also quite clear that innovation, namely that which is mediated and valued solely by market and economic and financial performance criteria, induces production and consumption that have contributed to climate change and levels of unsustainability of the planet. This text has three objectives: to requalify the role of innovation in capitalist society, to reconceptualize the relationship between tourism and innovation and to identify some challenges that will test this relationship in the post-COVID-19 era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary innovation destroys more value than it creates by three effects. First it mimics already existing basic technologies (phone, camera, directory, games) adding little value but displacing while disrupting existing services. Second, it exploits human rights to security, privacy and truthful reportage without seriously regulated or legislated accountability. Third, social media – the main offender – takes prodigious profits at huge social cost, by facilitating the grooming of terrorists, vulnerable persons and enabling varieties of criminality; it feloniously steals private property, notably human identities for advertising revenue; and it facilitates dissemination of fake news, research and propaganda. To parody Mark Zuckerberg's injunction to his company's corporate mission and its achievement of 'monopoly advantage' the company was, until recently, officially driven to 'move fast and break things' (i.e. the law). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a summary of the Editorial of the 25th Anniversary Special Issue of European Planning Studies. The editorial summarizes three representative articles from planners and economic policy actors published in 1993, the first year of publication of the journal. These write of threats and possibilities from privatized planning, from the European Single Market and the prospects for regional innovation policy. In the second part, nine papers are summarized. These range from an exegesis of the Anthropocene, the rise of populism and the transition in neoliberalist planning, and migration as a city planning issue in European cities. Other papers then analyse aspects of evolutionary change upon city and region policy and process dynamics. Finally a group of papers explore the rise of creative cities, 4.0 era industry and services and the role of 'starchitects' in city renewal as well as 4.0 digital settlements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Changes in leading-edge urban and regional development processes and policies signify the rise of the 'Quaternary' or 4.0 Era of economic growth. Few such spaces exist yet, but they have prodigious global reach from locations like Cambridge (as the exemplar here), Israel and Silicon Valley. Their surface spread has led to the designation 'thin globalization' compared with 'thick' antecedents based on manufacturing and routine services. Each displays 'post-cluster' or 'platform' inter-connectivity and even early signs of 'de-globalization' via on-shoring of suppliers. Pioneers in 'crossover' innovation 4.0 platform evolution include 'flagship' corporations like FAGAMi (Facebook, Apple, Google, Amazon and Microsoft). These and other flagships acquire and site labs in proximity to Cambridge's and other university research institutes and talent. They work to what seems like a neoliberal 'Plan for the Future' in at least three cases embedded in futuristic urban design utopias. This further advantages innovation 'microsystems' like Cambridge and innovation 'macrosystems' like Silicon Valley that evolve diversified 'platform-clusters' of 'crossover' innovations flowing from interactions among microelectronic systems, advanced mobility, machine learning, AI, robotics be mitigated healthcare. The research problem is how can such extreme uneven growth polarization and [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Special Issue showcases eight articles on the emergent idea of “entrepreneurial ecosystems”. As a subject it has begun to attract early attention because it professes to realise the fundamentally social processes of entrepreneurial practice as against the cartoon-like figure of the heroic entrepreneur much–beloved of those in entrepreneurial studies and policies of a more individualistic persuasion. Furthermore, it aims to assist development of coherence in the field of study occasioned by the great variety of forms and labels given to small and micro-businesses consequent on the erosion in scale and scope of many traditional large enterprises. A further introductory point to be made is that many of the articles on display originate in South Korea where the attenuation of large corporate actors, stagnating national growth rates and government support for entrepreneurship have been one response to the crisis. Hanjin is merely one of the recent casualties of the faltering of globalisation for the South Korean corporate sector, beneficiary of major port-related innovation investment in the past as the South Korea – China comparison paper reveals. Other papers anatomise “platform ecosystems” in ICT applications, green urban policies, clusters, creative industry and regional development. All of these impinge upon government support for entrepreneurial efforts to grow a more social economy and, indeed, economic sociology and geography of regional and national growth. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Innovation scholars have long recognized entrepreneurship is ‘imitative’, whereas the commercialization of novelty is ‘innovative’. Thus they are highly distinctive skill-sets. Entrepreneurship, first, involves optimizing market sentiment for pure profit sometimes to the point of catastrophe and even fraudulence in many markets. These include: payment protection insurance (PPI) to ‘flash crashes’, automotive emission ‘defeat devices’, corporate bribery settlements, social media ‘hacking’, ‘fake news’ and a litany of other infractions and catastrophes. Innovation, by contrast, is more explorative and team-reliant. Even if patenting betrays the hope for commercialization on markets, patented innovation frequently fails. Some academic innovators even profess a preference for prizes over profits. Second, this means that collective ‘bonding’ among entrepreneurs, in the form of claimed ‘entrepreneurial ecosystems’, is often based on a single customer platform or as a supplier of a highly specialist type of ‘imitative’ service from identikit pizza chains to ‘me-too’ smartphone apps. Through the latter, fused with artificial intelligence some interactive machine-learning services have long-existed as ‘postsocial’ algorithms serving customers of, for example, investment banks in stock and currency markets. Finally, entrepreneurship is fundamentally competitive, individualistic and non-solidaristic, whereas ‘open innovation’ was born from the practices of ‘open science’ and the collegiate tradition of research. Accordingly, ‘entrepreneurial ecosystems’ can display more closure than RIS set-ups. This special issue explores aspects of these ecosystem platforms and their implications for emergent forms of urban and regional evolution in the near and nearly present future. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The purpose of this Special Issue is to contribute to the still underresearched debate on regional and urban economic resilience by proposing some reflections focused on the contribution of art and culture to revitalization of de-activated spaces. In this sense, the idea that some creative regions, 'corridors' or cities are also resilient is to be examined to see the extent they are capable of re-energization. This means not only preserving but also transforming themselves in response to external pressures, generating local development, innovation and growth. The contributions included then offer, using a multidisciplinary perspective - in terms of theoretical approaches, research methodologies and empirical findings - an interesting contribution to a better understanding of the concept of this specific kind of regional and urban resilience. The Special Issue is composed of eight articles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article questions the relevance of the concept of 'resilience'. It traces the origins of this optimistic social variant of an ecological process that itself can be questioned for its belief in ultimate recovery. In the socio-spatial context, although this is seldom admitted, much of the modern space economy has been abandoned, lays derelict with city fabric often in ruins. The insights of Art History are drawn upon to expose this 'dark side' of past urban and regional development. This is because just as art thrives in propitious economic conditions, so it also declines when the money runs out. Certain unpleasant events can be traced to the exhaustion of Utopian practice, Enlightenment ideals and a weakness of states. This led to a fascination with the apparent decay of long-established values formerly expressed in western culture that now share more nihilistic elements with contemporary eastern culture. A proposal that a better interaction between the late capitalist 'arrested dialectic' of long-term stasis and the exhaustion of Art's wellsprings is that a new purpose can be found in fashioning an 'Art of Warning of Incipient Disaster'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today, the EU has changed its economic development support strategy for regions from a mainly procedural budgeting model to a more substantive one, especially regarding the priority to promote regional innovation. Thus, instead of a regional operational programme that emphasized budgetary controls, phasing and expenditure refinement, this was to be paralleled by a regional innovation strategy (RIS phase 3 or RIS3) to attract EU regional funding assistance. This was a radical departure from all hitherto prevailing ERDF/FEDER methodologies by which regions and their member states submitted such funding requests. This article explores this policy transition, its strengths and weaknesses. In particular, it presents empirically informed accounts of the ways in which RIS3 was received, comprehended and implemented in three regions of Portugal. In addition, it presents results of interviews also conducted with key central state actors in Lisbon. A major aim was to see how each policy level reacted to the way innovation was pre-defined in terms of regional ‘smart specialization' whereby regions dropped un-innovative activities and projected their best candidate specializations. Questioning of the validity of the notion in the innovation context occurs based on both primary and secondary research. A secondary aim was to investigate the methodologies, concepts and policy frameworks actually deployed in developing RIS3s in three Portuguese regions; Algarve, Centro and Norte. Third, another important aim in a follow-up section was to conduct anex postevaluation of the resulting approved implementation strategy. Discussion and conclusions are drawn in the final section. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a qualitative analysis of the changing fortunes of firms and territorial innovation systems in the emergent handheld devices segment of the global innovation network (GIN) in information and communication technology (ICT). The conceptual approach draws fairly lightly upon evolutionary complexity theory from which important concepts such as “path interdependence” “strange attractors” and system “self-organization” derive. In this version of a suite of papers on the GINs topic, particular emphasis is placed upon supply chain displacements of western chipmakers by Asian chipmakers from the first and second versions of theApple“smartphone”, forerunner of its equally successful “tablet” technology. These are the apotheosis of innovative “convergence” in which knowledge recombination produces unanticipated novelty in products and services. It is shown howApple, like earlier transitioning ICT firms such asIBM,Microsoftand, more recently,Hewlett Packard, engaged in “modularization” largely by acquisition in order to re-position themselves in new global markets. Spatial proximities and policies are seen as crucial to many of the processes described. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper works with global production network (GPN) as compared to global innovation network (GIN) theory and focuses on the global information and communication technologies (ICT), specifically the hard disk drive (HDD) aspects of that system. In this respect it has a double distinction to examine: it concerns complex socio-economic and political governance processes focused upon innovation, argued by many to be the guiding principle of the construction of economic advantage in the contemporary era and it utilizes theory to capture important contrasts in the condition of key and changing building blocks in the global ICT industry. Methodologically, it is qualitative and necessarily so, based in this instance on much secondary information interpretation and some interviews. The larger project of which these findings are a small part had a balance of the two methods of inquiry. Empirically, the paper finds that GPN set-ups are not particularly innovation-inducing, tend to stabilizing over the long term and firm growth is largely by acquisition. The contemporary global ICT system is, by contrast, endogenously innovative, far from stable and has greater developmental potential because of its key GIN characteristic, which is its capacity for novelty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aims of this paper are to reflect on policy evolution observed in the EURODITE study regions, to identify the most innovative policy trajectories for delivering growth opportunities to regional firms and to explain this in terms of key theoretical findings about the virtuous policy cycles that arise from geographical proximity, co-evolution, path inter-dependence, relatedness and transversality. Accordingly, the paper involves, first, assessing the role of varieties of “proximity” in the formation of spatial distinctiveness. Second it investigates the appropriateness or otherwise of notions of “path dependence” to understanding spatial co-evolution. This leads to insights about “relatedness” in the interaction of path dependences, or more accurately path inter-dependence in evolving spatial processes, notably interactions between regional innovation paradigms and regimes in explaining regional variety. This allows eventual conjecture regarding the evidence for “regional regime variety” based on appropriately selected EURODITE regions (Bavaria, Midi-Pyrénées, Skåne, Styria) both as an advanced “platform” model of regional evolution and as a fundamental process that blocks regional homogenization. This would explain how regional culture influences policy to maintain regional specificities under forces like globalization and “digital culture” that are purported to be erosive of regional distinctiveness. Strong empirical evidence is adduced for co-evolutionary and multi-level spatial distinctiveness in paradigms and regimes that condition contemporary innovation knowledge flows. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This short briefing paper addresses the next stage in the evolution of regional development policy. It is clear that the cluster idea has held sway in this field for some 20 years. By now, practitioners and academics are widely sceptical of policy capabilities to create let alone build clusters. Recessionary times make this more difficult. Moreover, where some recent success can be seen, it is associated with command economies such as China where normal market and democratic barriers to large public investments in such measures are absent. Nevertheless, clusters exist in many places and there is evidence, displayed in this paper, that in some regions they have mutated into multi-cluster platforms. Now, as regions seek to rebalance, platform policies are evolving and being implemented. This paper shows how this is in part a response to “Grand Challenges” and the emergence of “challenge-driven” innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Since Paul David first published his economic histories of path-dependent innovation, the subject has exerted fascination upon scholars of innovation and technological change and, latterly, regional scientists and economic geographers. This paper speaks of the third and fourth of these communities in the main, though it may have theoretical and empirical elements of interest to the first two as well. It begins with an overview of recent perspectives and critiques concerning the relevance of the path dependence concept to the understanding of regional economic development and its associated governance. It then goes on to discuss the contribution of evolutionary economic geography to thinking about “branching” from path dependence and the creation of new paths. Evidence for key generic spatial processes of path transition is provided before the main content of the paper concludes with new insights into the contributions of regional innovation policy to path evolution. Conclusions are then drawn. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to explore the extent to which regional culture informs the organizational culture of incumbent firms in specific regions and vice versa. To achieve this, we draw on a repertoire of conceptual and theoretical instruments, few of which have featured in the analysis of regional evolution hitherto. For example, the ideas of innovation systems of paradigm and regime are deployed as regional paradigms and regimes to access the dynamics of regional evolution. The concept of “spacing” is used to reveal the ways actors shape given places by meanings or symbols. Subsequently, the methodology of “cultural framing” is used to position key regional narratives and their meaning for regional evolution. This approach is then tested in a stylized manner against the main focal regions of the CURE project before being used in more detail to compare and contrast two of the more distinctive regional and corporate settings, Westphalia and Wales. In conclusion, we show the path inter-dependences and new path creations of both cast a new light on regional evolution in general and that of these regions in particular. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, we explore regional innovation in the use of varieties of algae as inputs to industrial processes. It is important to understand that algae are one of nature's most bountiful products, with an almost infinite variety of applications. Algae have received prominence in the research literature because of the strong evidence that they can make a major contribution to the production and-importantly-storage of renewable energy. Following the introduction to this paper, Section 2 reviews the nature and application of algae in two main aspects of clean energy production: first as biogasolene or biodiesel; second as large-scale storage batteries for electricity. The latter is particularly important as one classic deficiency of electricity is the difficulty in storing it for lengthy periods other than in short-life batteries. However (Section 3), there are other uses for algae, ranging from aquaculture to medicine and the production of cosmetics. In the southwest corner of the Iberian Peninsula, between Faro in Portugal through Huelva to Cadiz in Spain, is a significant research and commercial algae production zone. The paper describes the key system elements in play in this trans-border innovation network and considers prospects for new path creation towards biofuels, the main research and application centres for which are in the San Francisco Bay Area in California. Conclusions and recommendations for policy action are then drawn. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hydrogen and fuel cells may have a major role in the future energy market if governments give a high priority to reduction of CO2 emissions with associated R&D investment in efficient hydrogen technologies. It is predicted that China would have the highest share of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in 2050 if their ambitious climate and energy security policies are adopted (OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development)/IEA (International Energy Agency) (2005) Prospects for Hydrogen and Fuel Cells (Paris: OECD Publications)). R&D in hydrogen and fuel cell technologies in China has been pushed by the central government's commitment to reduce air pollution emissions from transportation, to enhance energy security and improve national competitiveness. The paper focuses on current policies and progress on hydrogen and fuel cell development in China. Development prospects and challenges are discussed with a view to achieving better understanding of the emerging hydrogen economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The notion that knowledge and skills are at the heart of innovation and competitiveness has become widely accepted by spatial academics and policy-makers. The role that knowledge and skills play in aerospace has only been examined by few accounts, however, and outsourcing as a key feature has hardly been studied. Hence, this article investigates how and to what extent knowledge and skills influence the outsourcing decisions of the aerospace industry, located in two agglomerations, in Wales. It emerges that the availability of technological capabilities and competencies is indeed the key to understanding outsourcing decisions. Airbus compensates for its own knowledge deficits through outsourcing to benefit from suppliers' enhanced expertise. The availability of well-developed skills is crucial to the success of the Airbus supply chain and other aerospace firms. Although skilled companies perform well today, challenges from future technologies must be addressed to remain competitive. An overdue upgrading of knowledge and skills, if met, promises to improve the competitive position of Welsh aerospace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most articles about life sciences begin from healthcare. This article reaches healthcare by an unusual route. It begins by trying to map out the complex content of the "Cleantech" platform. It then cross-connects important parts of that to the Agro-food industry, only finally relating important aspects of that to Healthcare biosciences. By Cleantech is meant the complex of industry activities dealing with energy-related agriculture, air and environment, materials, manufacturing, energy generation, efficiency, storage and infrastructure, recycling and waste treatment, transportation, water and wastewater that utilize renewable resources enhanced, as appropriate by life science technologies. The agro-food industry is large and less complex than Cleantech, but is currently still in thrall to its inheritance from agro-chemicals, food technology and nutrition science that dates from the post-war rise of industrial farming under corporate tutelage. Healthcare is also large, similarly traceable to fossil-based fine chemistry (drugs) and plastics (medical devices), dominated by large corporate businesses and, like agro-food assailed by a variety of attacks from alternative production paradigms. Cleantech, in part, seeks markets to rid the world of the pollutants of agro-food and healthcare as exemplars of the hegemonic US-led mass production/mass consumption paradigm. Tackling complexity on this scale requires new policy reflection, something with which the paper engages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has become clear that the idea of regional learning is an inadequate way of evolving regional economic development because of numerous problems of composition or utilizing samples of one, learning legacies and delays and impossibility of repeat experience. So, perforce, to offset regional imbalances responsible agencies are having to explore solutions endogenously in greater measure. This means constructing regional advantage, not an easy thing to do, by integrating and exploiting a range of assets from economic strengths to knowledge assets, good governance and creativity. Of great importance in this is seeking to promote “related variety” among economic activities. Single innovations diffuse swiftly across technology “platforms” into related industries because absorptive capacity is high among them. The key trick in constructing regional advantage is designing appropriate policy platforms that mix variable policy instruments in an integrated and judicious manner. This paper maps out a theoretical approach enabling this to be accomplished. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regional capabilities and knowledge domain theses are proposed. Global biotechnology dynamics are analysed. Detailed research on Europe's leading bioeconomy, the UK, is presented. Global network analysis is performed based on research into collaborations between “star” scientists and their institutes in bioregions at a global scale, with regard to joint publication of bioscientific articles in US and European Union (EU) Science Citation Index representative and leading cited journals. The originality here lies in identifying the hierarchical structure and main network axes in the global bioscientific research system. The results show the expected in that the strongest bioregions are in North America, particularly around Boston, San Diego and San Francisco. For collaboration, using this measure, Sweden is revealed as a strong European research base, as is the UK. New bioregions are found rising in Asia, and Japan for long quiescent has at last begun to move. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While conventional wisdom suggests that not all regions can have biotechnology, many national science policies target it as a future growth sector. The evidence here presented shows that cluster-building strategies are working and new clusters are emerging on a global basis. Particular growth areas include Asia and Eastern Europe. Two papers in this follow-up Special Issue on the subject after that published in Volume12, No. 7 (October) 2003 anatomise growth prospects there. Two others focus on developments in the UK and Canada, both of which are leading bioscience research and commercialisation economies. The final paper shows how international cross-border clustering is happening in Scandinavia. Each paper reveals that while biotechnology appears a rather narrow field, its applications are so wide in health, agro-food, energy and environmental sectors that it is becoming a core competence across a substantial segment of the modem economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Changes in epistemology in biosciences are generating important spatial effects. The most notable of these is the emergence of a few 'Bioscience Megacentres' for basic and applied bioscience medical and clinical research (molecular, post-genomic, proteomics, etc.), biotechnology research, training in these and related fields, academic entrepreneurship and commercial exploitation by clusters of 'drug discovery' start-up and spin-off companies, along with specialist venture capital and other innovation system support services. Large pharmaceutical firms that used to lead such knowledge generation and exploitation processes are becoming increasingly dependent upon innovative drug solutions produced in such clusters, and megacentres are now the predominant source of such commercial knowledge. 'Big pharma' is seldom at the heart of megacentres such as those the paper will argue are found in about four locations each in the USA and Europe, but remains important for some risk capital ('milestone payments'), marketing, and distribution of drugs discovered. The embedding of these processes also creates major new regional disparities, which some regional governances have recognised, causing them to develop responsibilities for regional science policy and funding to offset spatial biases intrinsic in traditional national (and in the EU, supranational) research funding regimes. Responses follow a variety of models ranging from market-following to both regionalised (decentralising by the centre) and 'regionalist' (ground-up); in each case, the role of megacentres is justified in health terms. But their role in assisting fulfilment of regional economic growth visions is also clearly perceived and pronounced in policy terms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Editorial introduces the Special Issue on 'Biotechnology Clusters and Beyond'. Drawing on the interventions of five commissioned articles from Canada, Germany, Israel, the UK and the US it suggests that biotechnology clusters are interesting and important intellectually and for policy deliberation. They pose questions about basic cluster theory because localized networks, though intense, may not be as extensive as global ones infirm practices, especially as these evolve over time. Moreover, innovation is more deeply embedded in the publicly landed science base than for 'Porterian' clusters. Regarding innovation, biotechnology is also less obviously Schumpeterian, there being little market-driven 'creative destruction', and is arguably, with its strong emphasis on both large- and small-firm 'capabilities'—Penrosian—an emphasis in clustering research and applications that warrants further investigation. Finally, at the specific technology-exploitation phase, market interactions assert themselves over milieu characteristics because scientists know the value of their discoveries and there is accordingly high appropriability associated with such knowledge capabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the reasons why cities are often major centres of innovation, even in some less favoured regions and countries. It starts with an anatomization of the dominant factors that explain why key less favoured settings developed 'new economy' clusters through institutional interaction with Silicon Valley. The analysis concludes that public research resources and private commercialization funding are central, supported by a wide array of private but few public innovation support services. It then examines a number of cases from cities in less favoured regions and countries where innovation has occurred. The conclusions are that the research-venture capital model is present and explains innovation in each case. However, in some cases public venture capital has to substitute for private due to market failure, or a phenomenon termed 'Silicon Valley Offshore' has been induced. Cities are innovative where they concentrate the desired scientific and investment knowledge capabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summarizes results of a research project funded by the Overseas Development Administration of the British government. Exploration of the nature and extent of foreign direct investment in Poland; Assessment of the extent of integration of such investment with the indigenous economy; Financial and technical obstacles to indigenous business development.

Discusses the industrial development of Emilia-Romagna, Italy. Future of industrial districts; Problems faced by small firms in Emilia-Romagna in the 1990s; Dependence of industrial policy on the regional rather than the national government level.

The article discusses various reports published within the issue focusing on contemporary innovations and venture capital.